Raid on European Belarus activists

The flat of activists of European Belarus civil campaign was searched ahead of the Solidarity Day.

Law-enforcement officers burst into the flat on the evening of February 15. “We saw through the window how they were detaining Yaraslau Hryshchanka. Three minutes later men in mufti broke into the flat. It turned out they took Hryshchanka's key. We were told they were looking for drugs,” Alyaksandr Vyalitchanka, an activist of European Belarus civil campaign, said.

Yaraslau Hryshchanka and his friend Dzmitry Kalach were beaten.

Instead of drugs, plainclothes law-enforcement officers found posters, leaflets to support Sannikov and flags of European Belarus campaign. “Then we, eight people, were taken to the Savetski district police department. They took video and fingerprinted us. We gave explanations concerning what we had been doing in the flat. After verification of the identity we were set free. No police reports were drawn up,” the activist said.

The leaflets, posters and flags were seized, but none of the activists was offered sign the seizure report, Vyalitchanka adds.

The plainclothes law-enforcement officers, who conducted the search, did not show any documents. They called policemen from the Savetski district police department to detain the activists.

European Belarus civil campaign is headed by Belarusian presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, who has been imprisoned on political grounds.